EXAMINATION
OF WITNESSES
(QUESTION NUMBERS
20-39)
KEITH BARTLEY,
MICK BROOKES,
DR JOHN
DUNFORD, MARTIN
JOHNSON, CHRISTINE
BLOWER AND
JOHN BANGS
16 MARCH 2009
Q20 ANNETTE
BROOKE: May I throw another question
into the pot, and perhaps people who have not answered the other
question can pick it up as well. Given that we have identified
some variability that is perhaps not desirable, should there be
an appeal against Ofsted's judgments? If so, what form could that
take?
JOHN
BANGS: I will
pay a compliment to Ofsted actuallyI know, it sounds extraordinary.
We fought for and achieved the establishment of a hotline. I do
not think that it is well used, but it should be. There is an
element of psychology at play, and we try to persuade colleagues
to understand that it does not go against you if you phone up
and complain about an inspection team. I would be interested to
know what Dr Dunford thinks about this, but having worked with
Ofsted all these years, my hunch is that it tries to operate as
neutrally as possible in such a situation. However, to take Martin's
point, the matter is so high-stake that what you correlate in
terms of those high stakes is that you will be punished if you
complain, which is unfortunate. There is also an independent adjudicator
who adjudicates whether or not the process has taken place. The
mechanisms are there, but the high-stakes nature of the system
intimidates head teachers from using them when they should use
them more. We always get a result from Ofsted. If we complain,
we get a decent and substantive reply. Whether or not we like
the reply is another matter, but it is actually explored. To use
Martin's point, the high-stakes nature does intimidate individual
heads from pursuing the matter as much as they might.
Q21 CHAIRMAN:
In any other field, Johnor both Johnsin relation
to a question like this you would be saying, "Well, the quality
of inspection, the quality of teaching or the quality of most
things depends on the quality of the staff and how they are recruited
and trained." Are staff recruited and trained well? How you
become an inspector is a bit murky, is it not?
DR
DUNFORD: They
have improved over the years. There is no question but that a
lot of bad inspectors have been weeded out. I have to say that
any cases taken up with Ofsted by our union are looked into in
detail and we get a good report back. That happened once we got
over the point that Mick Brookes made about people saying, "Well,
we weren't there, so we can't judge what happened because A says
one thing and B says another." We have largely managed to
get over that. I come back to the point that I made at the beginning:
at the end of the day, if you have an adjudicator, that person
should not be employed by Ofsted; they should be independent of
Ofsted. That degree of independence is necessary.
Q22 CHAIRMAN:
But Keith, you've been an inspector.
KEITH
BARTLEY: I've
been in HMI, yes.
CHAIRMAN: So,
is it training, quality? Is it good enough?
KEITH
BARTLEY: I was
reflecting on that question, because there are two elements to
it. One is the extent to which inspection teams are trained. I
was a registered inspector before I became an HMI, and that was
from the very early days of Ofsted.
CHAIRMAN: I
wondered why you were sitting on your own at the end.
KEITH
BARTLEY: I will
confess now a degree of culpability, because we were also responsible
for some of the very early training materials for inspectors.
But no, I differentiate between the two direct experiences that
I have; one was of setting up a massive national group of registered
and trained inspectors. The demands were such that quality assuring
that product after initial and very intensive training was difficult
to do. That has been caught up with a bit now, but from my own
experience of being at HMI, it was profoundly the most challenging
and professionally rewarding experience of my life. For six months,
I was taken completely out of anything I knew about in the education
system.
Q23 CHAIRMAN:
So, the training. If it is by HMI or by someone hired by an agencybecause
they are, aren't they?you're all happy with the quality
of inspectors that you get? The quality's all right?
DR
DUNFORD: We
would much rather have a system in which HMI was always leading
the teams.
CHAIRMAN: Aha!
DR
DUNFORD: There
is a higher proportion of HMI-led teams than there used to be
in the early days of Ofsted, but we would rather have a systembecause
we believe it would be more consistentwhereby all teams
were led by HMI.
MARTIN
JOHNSON: I'm
sorry to be sordid, but you grilled Ofsted recently about its
finances and, I believe, it revealed that because of the need
to cut its budgets, it was going to try to remove downwards the
costs of an inspection team when they come up for re-tender. Frankly,
you get what you pay for.
CHAIRMAN: Point
well taken. You realise that we are doing the training of teachers
just started, so you've got to be back pretty damn quickly on
the training of teachers. I hope you're going to say more about
the training of teachers than you're saying about the training
of inspectors. I've been giving Annette a break because she's
not too well today. She has a lot of questions.
Q24 ANNETTE
BROOKE: I have one more question.
This comes back to something the Chief Inspector said I had got
all wrong, so perhaps I can ask the same question of you. Do Ofsted
teams frequently come with almost a pre-determination of the outcome
of their reports, in that they have collected the statistical
data? Isn't that what the schools are going to be judged on primarily?
CHAIRMAN: Let's
start with Mick. You can refer back to the last question. You
were frustrated about not being able to answer.
MICK
BROOKES: Thank
you. That was one point I was going to make. The complaints that
we get in are twofold. There are fewer complaints about the behaviour
of the inspector; the complaint that we get most frequently is
that the school's context was ignored. The external data are used
to judge the school, and whatever else is going on in the school
is ignored. Some of that is about the length of inspection, but
some of it again is about the attitude of the inspector. With
some, you feel as though the inspection report has been written
before they get anywhere near the school. That is really frustrating.
There are schools that are really struggling to bring education
to those areas where it has not been deemed to be a great thing
to have, but they have plenty of other things going on as well
as simply standards. It is a standards-driven inspection process,
but this is not a simple process. It involves looking at the schoolfor
instance, its work in the community, creativity and arts. All
those things make up a good school, not just standards. The standards-driven
process needs to change.
JOHN
BANGS: May I
pick up two issues. First, the training issue. If you have the
responsibility for evaluating a school, you should have the responsibility
for being based in that school and working with teachers, having
given that advice. That is part of the training. The trouble with
Ofsted inspectors is that they parachute in and disappear again.
That model did, in my experience, work very well in the Inner
London Education Authority. Inspectors based in the schools team
targeted schools that were in trouble and worked with them internally.
They gave advice, came in and followed through. That would be
good practice and good training.
Q25 CHAIRMAN:
For how long?
JOHN
BANGS: Six months
to a year, Chair. Martin will remember it very well, since he
and I worked together in ILEA. On the issue of the data, they
inform everything. As Mick said, they prejudge the judgments that
are made. That is a real and crying shame. The current Permanent
Secretary at the Department for Children, Schools and Families,
David Bell, was the first chief education officer to pick up and
run with genuine school self-evaluation. After we had published
Schools Speak for Themselves, which was the initial model
document on self-evaluation back in 1995, he got all the teachers
together in Newcastle and held a conference about how we can be
courageous and ask pupils, parents and members of the community
about the strength and weaknesses of schools. What we have now
is a data-drive, high-stakes system. In fact, we have done continuous
studies on where self-evaluation should have gone. What suffered
is a portrait and a picture of the school climate, for exampleteachers
feeling confident, parents feeling confident and children feeling
confident enough to contribute to the debate on school climate
and where the pinch points are in terms of anxieties and bullying.
Everything is data-driven down on the results, and the comparisons
are made on a fairly arid form. The self-evaluation model has
been warped by its high stakes nature. I absolutely agree with
Mick on that.
Q26 PAUL
HOLMES: I well remember when I
was a teacher the long preparation time before an Ofsted inspection.
Teachers and heads were not happy with that. Ofsted then moved
to short notice for inspections, and teachers and heads were not
happy with that. I then remember Ofsted saying that it wanted
to move to no notice for inspections, and teachers and heads were
not happy with that. What do we do about the length of notice?
CHAIRMAN: You
are all keen on that, but Mick was first on the buzzer.
MICK
BROOKES: The
unannounced inspections are a nonsense. As for going out to say
to parents, "Do you want them?", parents might say conceptually,
"Yes, we do," because any school should be able to be
inspected at any time. But the operational aspects of that get
in the way, particularly with heads of small schools who have
a class to teach, so the inspection would be about the quality
of the supply teacher. I do not think that the operational aspects
or the logistics of the measure have been properly thought through.
It is a bit like going to see your doctor and seeing how well
you are, but my preferred view would be that the next inspection
is organised by the team that does the current inspection, so
a school that is doing well would be told that it does not need
to be seen for whatever length of time, while a school that is
experiencing difficulties is told that it had better be seen a
bit sooner. That would be a highly professional way of going on.
The concept of unannounced inspections, apart from being operationally
difficult, could be called "catch you out" inspections,
but I do not think that that is possible. If an inspection looks
at, for instance, the quality of children's work, even if you
had six months, the current two days or the time that there was
to do that, you will not improve the quality of the work, certainly
over two days, on a short or long-term basis. Likewise, as for
behaviour, it is my view that we cannot suddenly get children
to behave well in two days. In fact, the ones who will behave
badly will be even more likely to behave badly when an audience
is there. I do not think you can change the fundamental basis
of a school, but you can drive towards your desired outcomes for
your next inspection. I think that should be a place of partnershipfor
the school to say, "Look, we've got this work to do before
the next inspection, and we want to work on that with our school
improvement partner."
KEITH
BARTLEY: It
is important to distinguish between purposes and inspection. If
one of the primary functions of inspection is to assist with improving
practice and to help a school develop, unannounced inspections
are unlikely to serve that purpose well, because it is about a
degree of engagement prior to and subsequent to the inspection
itself. However, if the purpose of the inspection is to do with
protecting children, there is a strong case to be made for unannounced
inspections, so we have to distinguish clearly between the purposes.
Q27 PAUL
HOLMES: When you say protecting
children, are you talking about children's residential schools?
KEITH
BARTLEY: Not
necessarily. For example, in early years or child care settings,
at the moment, if a complaint is made, Ofsted has the power, and
exercises it, to make unannounced visits. I would hate the Committee
to take away an assumption that unannounced inspections, per se,
were being rejected, because it is about the purpose.
Q28 PAUL
HOLMES: So, you would distinguish
between one area of Ofsted inspections and mainstream school inspections?
KEITH
BARTLEY: Yes.
CHAIRMAN: Are
all three of you going to answer? Let us start with Dr Dunford.
DR
DUNFORD: I have
only one sentence to say really. If Ofsted inspection is part
of a quality assurance process, then no-notice inspections do
not have a place. If it is simply about catching people out, then
that is what you do. I support what has been said about serious
child protection issues, for which they may well have to go in
unannounced, but not for school improvement purposes.
Q29 CHAIRMAN:
John, do you think it is worrying that Ofsted does both types
of inspection?
JOHN
BANGS: Yes.
Q30 CHAIRMAN:
I asked the Chief Inspector about that when she gave evidence
on I guess what could be described as whole the dreadful Baby
P tragedy. I asked whether one of the problems was that an inspection
system that was fitted for one system was being applied to another.
Do you think there is a problem with that, and that what is appropriate
in one sector is deeply inappropriate in another?
DR
DUNFORD: I think
you are right, Chairman. It may well be that there are different
styles of inspection for different purposes, and Ofsted has clearly
had a very big learning curve, with the whole children's services
inspection issues and safeguarding issues of the last 18 months
or so, since it took on responsibility for all those things. It
is perfectly possible that the right kind of inspection for that
may be quite different to the right kind of inspection for school
improvement.
JOHN
BANGS: If inspection
is supposed to be an iterative process, as they say in fashionable
parlance, and it should be, since it should be part of a conversation
and dialogue about improvementif the inspector says, "I
want to test you on this one," and you say, "Well, okay,
I want to test you on your premises," and then there is a
conversation about itthen Martin's model is nearer. I am
not arguing for a local inspection, but for a more localised approach
to a national framework. We have argued that there should be teams
that are more locally based, not necessarily inspecting their
own authority's schools, but inspecting other authority's schools,
within a national framework for quality assurance of those evaluators.
On the question about the two to five days, you will see a summary
of our latest survey in our submission, and the one thing that
members felt was fair about the current inspection model and unfair
about the future model was the two to five days. Although they
did not like the high-stakes nature of inspections, they thought
that two to five days was about as good as it got in terms of
balance, and they cannot understand why the Chief Inspector is
now dallying with the idea. All that we can get, or that I can
get from conversationsI have to try to find these mythical
parents who are pressing the Chief Inspector and the Government
very hard for no-notice inspectionsis that it is part of
the political agenda which says, "We are now the Government
that listens to parents." I do not see any evidence of that,
but it is part of a political move. It is fair to say that we
expect that evidence to be gathered in those two to five days.
There may be pressure, but that is a short amount of time and
there is not the same pre-inspection tension.
Q31 PAUL
HOLMES: Can I go back to how you
complain about Ofsted, which you have talked about. John Bangs
mentioned the hotline that has been established but is not used
enough. Over the years, I have been contacted by teachers, head
teachers and deputy head teachers from around the country who
have grievances because they feel that their career has been ended
by an Ofsted inspection. They feel that they have no redress as
an individual, as opposed to that which a school has as an institution.
Is that so? What can we do about it?
JOHN
BANGS: The difficulty
comes with small departments in schools or with small schools
because it is possible to identify individuals. That is the nature
of the high-stakes inspection. You can be fingered quite unfairly
in a report as an individual rather than the contribution that
you make to the institution. Thank goodness Ofsted got rid of
the little notes that inspectors gave to the head teacher about
the performance of the individual. The only way to get away from
the identification of individuals is through a different form
of inspection using the self-evaluative model, under which inspectors
challenge the school on its self-evaluation report on a more conversational
or iterative basis. I do not think that you will be able to get
away from the high-stakes model of identifying individuals in
small schools because of the nature of the model.
Q32 CHAIRMAN:
So you do not think that it is part of any inspection to point
out that a teacher is struggling in their role?
JOHN
BANGS: I do
not think that there is a role in the current inspection system
or any future inspection system to do that. It is important to
have an effective performance management system. Christine raised
this earlier and I would like to take up what she said. I am involved
in international work with teacher organisations in other countries.
Many teacher organisations do not understand the term "assessment",
but do understand the term "evaluation". They often
remark that the evaluations of the pupil, the teacher, the school
and the system are muddled up in this country. As my colleagues
have said, you have to be clear about what you want evaluation
for. You need a system to evaluate the progress of individual
pupils and a system of evaluation that leads to professional development
for teachers, such as a performance management system. The different
purposes must not be mixed up.
Q33 CHAIRMAN:
Should we not have got that clear early on? One criticism of the
GTC is that it does not clear enough poor teachers out of the
profession compared with systems in other countries, which seem
to be able to identify weak teachers and persuade them by whatever
means that it is not the right occupation for them. The GTC hardly
ever relieves the profession of very many teachers at all.
KEITH
BARTLEY: My
colleagues are involved in research into what incentives and disincentives
there are in the current system for referring or not referring
teachers to capability procedures. Your question misses one point
that distinguishes the system in England: each year we set out
to train a much larger number of teachers than those who choose
to go into the classroom and stay there. There is a sense in which
our training gives trainees the opportunity to consider whether
this is the right job for them. I am convinced that a number decide
during the training that it is not. Other selection and deselection
processes are at work beyond teachers being referred to us through
competency procedures. I want to make it clear that my powers
do not extend to going out and finding them. We are actually at
the point at which a referral has to be made to us by an employer.
CHAIRMAN: I
do not want you to get upset. That was by way of making sure you
were still awake. I promise you that we will come back to that.
DR
DUNFORD: A quick
point. You cannot create a system which relies on Ofsted to identify
weak teachers. They only come every three, four or five years,
or whatever.
CHAIRMAN: John,
I merely threw that in, honestly, to wake you up a little bit.
DR
DUNFORD: To
wake me up? I am as alert as I have been for several days.
Q34 MR TIMPSON:
One of the common threads that seems to be coming through from
pretty much all of you is that the self-evaluation framework that
we have at the moment is not playing the part that it should be
playing in the process of school accountability. So, bringing
together all the different threads that you have been talking
about on self-evaluation, can you say what role you believe it
should be playing in school accountability and the inspection
process?
MICK
BROOKES: A major
role and one that operatesI think we opened up with thiswithin
the parameters of trust, where the people doing the self-evaluation
are trusted to make those judgments. Tim Brighouse was talking
at the ASCL conference the other day about high trust and low
accountability. I do not think that that is right, actually. We
want a system that operates in high trust, but the high accountability
has to come from the schools themselves. Making sure that the
rigour is there and ensuring that they are performing in the way
that is correct for the children in those contexts comes from
the school itself. Again, you have to move away from a system
in which you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent.
It has to be done under systems that are also accredited. I should
like to get on to the role of the school improvement partner,
which is not fit for purpose any more. Certainly, assisting the
leadership of the school in that assessment is important, particularly
when there may only be two or three other people in that school.
So clustering arrangements must be considered, as must ensuring,
for instance, that you have a chartered assessor available to
make sure that children's work is being assessed at the right
levels. Where there are difficulties with teacher performance
in the classroom, there must be support for headsnot only
the teachers in the classroomwho have to tackle those difficult
problems.
MARTIN
JOHNSON: Chair,
your last remarks showed up very much how the drive for school
improvement is often conflated with the drive for school accountability.
Those things need to be separated. Notwithstanding, as has already
been said this afternoon, the addition to Ofsted's statutory remit
of a duty to work on improvement, that is still not how it works
in practiceand neither can it. The way to embed school
improvement in our schools is not through accountability mechanisms,
but through growing the culture of a school as a learning institution
and a reflective one. Two things that have been mentioned recently
are key to that. One is a form of self-evaluation owned by the
whole staff that is not a bureaucratic exercise conducted for
a high-stakes external observerI say that again because
it is so importantbut that is integral to whole-school
staff reflection on itself, coupled with performance management,
which was recently introduced into the discussion. Regrettably,
too few of our schools still have a performance management process
that is embedded into their everyday work. I am a great sponsor
of performance management, not least because I spent many happy
hours helping to develop the new arrangements with colleagues
here. ATL believes strongly in performance management as a tool
to improve teacher effectiveness and, therefore, pupil outcomes,
but you might say that performance management should be inspected,
and I am not clear that it is.
Q35 CHAIRMAN:
Martin, you just said that we have not got much left, but you
now want to inspect it. Is that not making you rather vulnerable?
MARTIN
JOHNSON: What
I am saying is that if what we are all about is better teaching
and learning, accountability is not as important as some of the
other things.
DR
DUNFORD: In
2004, we had from the Minister for School Standards a properly
thought out new relationship with schools, which had self-evaluation
at the centre, driven by the same sort of data that would drive
the work of a school improvement partner. I disagree with Mick
that that is not fit for purpose, because the role of supporting
and challenging heads is fit for purpose, but the problem is that
it has become far too top-down, because heads are told what to
do and given lots of targets and so on. There is school self-evaluation,
a school improvement partner and Ofsted. That is a strong three-legged
stool of school accountability. The school self-evaluation feeds
into the Ofsted process through the self-evaluation formthe
so-called SEF. That works well, and I hope that the relationship
will become even stronger. Between the Ofsted visits, it is the
job of the school improvement partner to monitor the progress
of the self-evaluation in supporting and challenging the head.
That is working well, and I think the huge strides forward that
schools have made in the past five years on self-evaluation, encouraged
greatly by the people sitting at this table, particularly the
NUT, which has always been strong on school self-evaluation, have
been an important driver for school improvement.
Q36 CHAIRMAN:
You do not have to say anything now, do you John?
JOHN
BANGS: I feel
I ought tothere is a brand here.
There are two models of school improvement.
One is the delivery model, which characterises "deliverology",
which we are all aware of, and one is creating the conditions
for change. The model that we have promoted since the mid 1990sI
remember sitting with Dr Dunford at the annual lecture by the
previous Chief Inspector when he lambasted us for our commitment
to self-evaluationis the one about creating the conditions
for change. My problem with the current self-evaluation form and
the inspector's model is that, actually, it is a cheap substitute
for inspectors coming in themselves and spending longer. We once
had a fascinating conversation with the former Chief Inspector,
who had just become the Permanent Secretary, about what came firstthe
chicken or the eggin terms of whether self-evaluation was
a convenient way of coping with the fact that Ofsted's budget
had been cut, or whether it was it a glint in the eye prior to
the budget cut. We did not get a satisfactory answer. The issue
is how to get to the guts of what the school community values
and knows is working, and then, in terms of the external check
on self-evaluation, how you can test that out so that you prove
that you know that it is working. Currently, we do not have a
system that gets to the guts of the effectiveness of the school
overall. It is very results dominated and tick-list based. I say
that because I go back to a wonderful thing that a bunch of year
2 and 3 youngsters said about what they thought a good teacher
ought to be. This goes back to our original work in the '90s,
and I do not have any information that contradicts this. They
were clear about what good teachers are: "They are very clever,
they do not shout, they help you every day, they are not bossy,
they have faith in you, they are funny, they are patient, they
are good at their work, they tell you clearly what to do, they
help you with your mistakes, they mark your work, they help you
to read, they help you with spelling, and they have courage."
CHAIRMAN: That
is Paul Holmes!
JOHN
BANGS: It is
a lovely description. Why should you not be interrogating a school
on whether or not those attitudes are there? Teachers are committed
to that, pupils are committed to that and parents are committed
to that, but that voice does not appear in the current self-evaluation
model. Why? It is because it is skewed into an incredibly data-based,
comparative approach instead of how it describes the nature of
the school in the community. Finally, on SIPs, I agree with Mick.
I have to say, John, that this is one area in which I disagree
with you. Conceptually, the school improvement partner is flawed.
You are supposed to have a critical friend. You cannot have a
critical friend if that critical friend keeps on going back to
the local authority to snitch on you. I have to say that that
is not my definition of a critical friend.
MICK
BROOKES: Can
I just pick that up. We have just passed notes, John. There is
a big difference here between the school improvement partners
in the secondary sector and the school improvement partners across
sectors, particularly in the primary sector. In the secondary
sector, it is peer support, by and large, because SIPs usually
come from the education or school leadership community. In the
primary sector, it is not like that. It has recycled some local
authority inspectors who have taken it up. There may be a variation
in quality there. The person should be a management and leadership
supporter rather than someone who has done the things that John
has just said.
CHAIRMAN: Edward,
you have got them sparkling here.
Q37 MR TIMPSON:
Maybe I should just keep quiet. Let me touch again on SEF forms.
I went to a school in my constituency recently and spoke to the
head teacher. She was very concerned with the form on two fronts.
First, it was far too rigid and did not offer the opportunity
to express what her school was about, particularly as it was needing
to improve from its previous inspection. Secondly, the strengths
and the weaknesses of the school, which she readily accepted,
were somehow lost in the process, both in terms of filling in
the form and of looking at improvement within the school. How
would you go about sharpening that tool, or should we get rid
of it all together and start again on where we go with the self-evaluation
model?
MICK
BROOKES: Self-evaluationand
written self-evaluationis at the heart of self-improvement.
I was very pleased when Christine Gilbert came to the Social Partnership
and reminded us that the SEF is not a statutory instrument. One
of the things that we are saying to people is that your SEF is
not something that you write for inspectors, but something that
you write for your school, and it informs your school improvement
programme. Therefore, it has to be a tool that picks up the very
things that you are talking about. If the rigid framework and
the online version of that does not fit, we are saying very clearly
to our members, "You need to take ownership of this document,
and it needs to say those things that you want to say about your
school provided that it acknowledges that where there are areas
of weakness, you will address them in your plan."
KEITH
BARTLEY: I was
going to offer some principles around what excessive accountability
might look like if it has been commissioned, which helps to get
at what my good practice in the SEF will be. We were given four
things to think about. One was that excessive accountability imposes
high demands on office holders under conditions of limited time
and energy. Actually, I think that you get plenty of time and
opportunity to revisit a SEF. Again, excessive accountability
contains mutually contradictory evaluation criteria, and some
of the restrictiveness around the SEF starts to go towards that
territory. It contains performance standards that extend beyond
established good practice and that invite subversive behaviour
and goal displacement. It is that latter area in which the restrictive
nature of the SEF takes schools towards unintended conclusions
or an inability to set out their own store in the language that
they would use.
Q38 MR TIMPSON:
Earlier, you touched on having a commercial operation coming in
and doing the self-assessment process. I have two questions about
that. How much does it cost a school to do that, and is it deemed
to have more credibility by going down that route?
DR
DUNFORD: The
cost depends on the size of the school. We can give you the figures;
I do not have them in my head, but the cost is substantiala
few thousand pounds in a secondary school. But I think that the
schools like it because somebody else is processing all the formsyou
are not having to go through themand because you get a
lot more information out of it as the stuff is analysed against
the performance of other schools in similar surveys. So, by using
the commercial companies, you are getting more information with
less work on your part, while still having a say in the design
of the questionnaire.
JOHN
BANGS: I want
to upend that a bit. All our experience from our professional
development programme is that teachers take to learning how to
do research like a duck to water. We work closely with Cambridge
University on a project called "Learning Circles". Teachers
put up their own research projects and they are tested and evaluated
by the Cambridge tutor to see whether they stand up in research
terms. The teachers then produce their 60-point contribution to
their masters with the research results at the end. I do not have
a problem with anyone outside conducting it, so long as you are
in charge of the research. There is a strong argument, as part
of self-evaluation, for teachers themselvesas part of the
teaching and learning processnot to have additional research
bolted on, which you have to do to be able to say, "These
results are right because this is an entirely independent commercial
company," and to guard against accusations that you are somehow
bending the research because you are doing it. It says something
about the system that you feel you have to do that. We have done
this work over years and I am in favour of self-evaluation that
is about teachers being confident in using their own evaluative
and research models that are rigorous and accurate and also involve
trust in the system, about knowing that those results will be
treated in a developmental way, and about looking at how we can
build on what we have found out, rather than viewing things in
a punitive way: x, y and z are failing.
CHAIRMAN: Edward,
do you have one more quick question or are you done?
MR TIMPSON:
I am done.
Q39 CHAIRMAN:
We have two sections to cover quickly. The first, on school management,
is being led by DavidAndrew and David will do these together.
First, I have a quick question. Does anybody else know where self-assessment
is so heavily leant on? Is there self-assessment in police forces
and the health service? Is it contagious?
DR
DUNFORD: I hope
that it is, because it is the profession acting as professionals
to self-evaluate. If that evaluation can be something that is
not just done by the head teacher to the staff, but can go downas
John Bangs saysinto the root of people's work in the classroom
so that you are constantly evaluating what you do yourself, in
addition to the institution constantly evaluating what it does,
you have real quality assurance.
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